Showing posts with label enterprise tuesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enterprise tuesday. Show all posts
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
If your motive is only to make money
.....you are more than likely to make very different choices than if you want to change the world
Enterprise Tuesday has had its next inspirational speaker – Dr Darrin Disley – parallel biotech entrepreneur and founding CEO of Horizon Discovery. His talk was focused on motivation and mindsets.
Darrin talked about two basic mindsets – one that says I have what it takes and now I shall go forth and leverage that (fixed) and the other which is growth oriented that says I shall keep on learning and adapting. Of course Darrin is British – and I am kind of with him on this – there is a third way – the transitional mindset – whereby if we accept we are who we are then we begin to realize what we need to do to change – but if we are delusional about our mindset being completely open – then we may well actually be stuck!!
There is an irony – and only your own strong sense of self-awareness and a reality check from people who care and are honest will affirm this. Why is it important?
Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviours require us to have an appreciative mindset; where we always see opportunities for new things, see possibilities in events, people and actions. A strong analytical mind that looks for pitfalls and problems will too quickly focus on narrowing down options when in reality we need to be open and adapt to changes. We need to be agile, alert to opportunities and be able to listen to customers and general feedback. Of course this does not mean you park your common sense or critical ability.
This kind of mindset turns problems into opportunities and perhaps reduces a fear of failure too – which is so important in entrepreneurship. I think it is only when the desire for success out weighs the fear of failure that we can act.
On the topic of motivations – Darrin set out the literature on the topic of the hot buttons that exist to get people moving towards a purpose. In his case – a strong sense of independence, desire to help, need for recognition were among the drivers. Until we know what ticks our boxes and those of our team members we will not have a united team that functions towards a common purpose. Darrin told us his story via the “good, bad and ugly” companies he had started and worked on.
In the end – it is very clear that in the case of this entrepreneur – vision and values are the bigger drivers than economic gain – although economic gain is also finally important – after all how do you measure the eventual ability to give back unless you make something in the first place.
His current success is Horizon Discovery and several investments in startups. Thank you Darrin.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Creating and sustaining big visions – is this the real answer to success?
I have long felt that unless we get inspired by the notion of solving big problems or finding things that are meaningful to accomplish there is little to sustain a venture. Sure you can go in a tread through the daily grind of buying and selling, making and promoting or playing small games, but to what end?
One sentence in a book I found in an Ashram – I think – has done more to keep me focused than almost anything else I have come across and to paraphrase this sentence – it is “when the mind is full of little thoughts – where is the space for big ideas”?
It is in this context that I responded to a suggestion by David Carter – a colleague in the Chemical Engineering Department – who kindly also offered to talk to the theme of a need for big visions. As I rambled my way through his suggestion and developed my own view of how best to position this in the minds of nascent entrepreneurs – it seemed obvious! Invite the CEO of the most iconic company in the Cambridge cluster and ask for his views on the notion of big visions.
Fortunately – Warren East has agreed and so I look forward to his talk on Enterprise Tuesday on the 23rd Of February. He has agreed to talk about the vision as it was shaped in the early days of ARM – from a collection of a dozen engineers who had to survive the demise of Acorn Computers, through to the shaping of an ambition by an emergent team led by Robin Saxby to now – when ARM has decided to take on the “Elephant in the room” – Intel!!
I have met some of Warren’s colleagues who – rightly suggest that ARM is inside Intel already – as the latter are clients of ARM. Business strategy in recent times has led to Intel seeking to acquire ARM. meanwhile ARM is growing from strength to strength http://www.executiveinterviews.net/players/full/default.asp?order=UK03880b - see Warren's comments about the prospects from growth as a result of new products from Apple.
So – was the threat of being lost inside a major multinational – the threat of being squashed by the elephant the stimulus that ARM needed to restate their ambitions – to create the next big vision for growth of the business?
Warren will address some of these topics along with his own sources of inspiration – those that have given him his insights and confidence to take ARM to the next level.
Before we have Warren’s talk and opportunity to ask him tough questions – we have Professor John Mullins (the week before) giving us a reality check by asking if in our plans for new ventures we have a Plan B and helpfully telling us what that looks and feels like. He will base his talk on his new book – based on extensive Silicon Valley experience. He and his co-author Randy Komisar who is Partner at Silicon Valley's leading Venture Capital organisation - Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Incidentally Randy is also author of a best seller - The Monk and the Riddle.
John is a thought leader, a Prof at London Business School and a serial entrepreneur/investor. I am looking forward to his talk as I am engaged in building out an early stage business myself – having raised a second round of funding to cross the chasm from being a research based company to a fully fledged business looking for revenues and customers! Do we need a Plan B? http://faculty.london.edu/jmullins/175.htm
One sentence in a book I found in an Ashram – I think – has done more to keep me focused than almost anything else I have come across and to paraphrase this sentence – it is “when the mind is full of little thoughts – where is the space for big ideas”?
It is in this context that I responded to a suggestion by David Carter – a colleague in the Chemical Engineering Department – who kindly also offered to talk to the theme of a need for big visions. As I rambled my way through his suggestion and developed my own view of how best to position this in the minds of nascent entrepreneurs – it seemed obvious! Invite the CEO of the most iconic company in the Cambridge cluster and ask for his views on the notion of big visions.
Fortunately – Warren East has agreed and so I look forward to his talk on Enterprise Tuesday on the 23rd Of February. He has agreed to talk about the vision as it was shaped in the early days of ARM – from a collection of a dozen engineers who had to survive the demise of Acorn Computers, through to the shaping of an ambition by an emergent team led by Robin Saxby to now – when ARM has decided to take on the “Elephant in the room” – Intel!!
I have met some of Warren’s colleagues who – rightly suggest that ARM is inside Intel already – as the latter are clients of ARM. Business strategy in recent times has led to Intel seeking to acquire ARM. meanwhile ARM is growing from strength to strength http://www.executiveinterviews.net/players/full/default.asp?order=UK03880b - see Warren's comments about the prospects from growth as a result of new products from Apple.
So – was the threat of being lost inside a major multinational – the threat of being squashed by the elephant the stimulus that ARM needed to restate their ambitions – to create the next big vision for growth of the business?
Warren will address some of these topics along with his own sources of inspiration – those that have given him his insights and confidence to take ARM to the next level.
Before we have Warren’s talk and opportunity to ask him tough questions – we have Professor John Mullins (the week before) giving us a reality check by asking if in our plans for new ventures we have a Plan B and helpfully telling us what that looks and feels like. He will base his talk on his new book – based on extensive Silicon Valley experience. He and his co-author Randy Komisar who is Partner at Silicon Valley's leading Venture Capital organisation - Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Incidentally Randy is also author of a best seller - The Monk and the Riddle.
John is a thought leader, a Prof at London Business School and a serial entrepreneur/investor. I am looking forward to his talk as I am engaged in building out an early stage business myself – having raised a second round of funding to cross the chasm from being a research based company to a fully fledged business looking for revenues and customers! Do we need a Plan B? http://faculty.london.edu/jmullins/175.htm
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Nobel Prize winning science –creates a biotech industry, Enterprise Tuesday 19th January 2010
Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) was founded in the dying days of 1989 to develop human therapeutic antibodies. The early stages were difficult; the underlying science was only half done, and the large pharmaceutical companies and most investors did not believe that antibodies were viable drugs, although now it is an industry with a turnover of more than $25 bn per annum. Sir Gregory Winter (a founder) and Dr Kevin Johnson (an early recruit) will piece together the founding, and the development of the science and business of CAT, including the early development of the blockbuster drug HumiraTM directed against rheumatoid arthritis."
The story behind CAT though is just as fascinating and as background here is my attempt to summarize.
The creation of the business and the biotech industry goes back to a major misunderstanding about intellectual property ownership and its exploitation.
One of the articles is about who is at the heart of the nobel prize (1984) winning science – Milstein or Kohler? (http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v4/n2/full/nri1265-c1.html) We certainly hear about this issue from many graduates and others who are anxious about how much of their new ideas they feel they can share openly. Ownership of the idea that then leads to a discovery or to a business that succeeds is close to the heart of individuals. And how this ownership of the discovery is subsequently commercialised is also an important debate for Universities, individual researchers, the venture capitalists and management teams.
The other part of the controversy is whether or not it was smart to publish and “give away” cell lines and the mice to those who might be competitors. This is a more serious argument and some think that the patenting regime can be stifling and restrictive to the ultimate benefits of society.
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v23/n9/full/nbt0905-1047.html
There are probably three major themes to this debate. First – whether all new knowledge generated through public funding actually belongs to society anyway – in which case it should be published for wider dissemination and this includes any commercial exploitation. The second line of argument has been that the way patenting and licensing is done – starts to become increasingly defensive and is a broken system and therefore acts against the best interests of what it is actually supposed to encourage. The third is simply that unless one has a system that can be understood the capital and resources from organisations that have the capability to commercialise the science will just not do so.
I am not knowledgeable enough to fully comment on this third aspect – but it seems to me that if the opportunity is big enough and the deals are there to be done, is the commercial exploitation not more to do with management and markets than about ring fencing the ownership of IP? In some industries now (e.g. internet) there is a greater push for open source and open innovation and in most technology clusters there is increasing collaborative working.
For those of us – who need to understand how or why this science is significant there is a layman’s description of the impact of monoclonal antibodies. http://www.dana.org/news/publications/detail.aspx?id=4278
The story behind CAT though is just as fascinating and as background here is my attempt to summarize.
The creation of the business and the biotech industry goes back to a major misunderstanding about intellectual property ownership and its exploitation.
One of the articles is about who is at the heart of the nobel prize (1984) winning science – Milstein or Kohler? (http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v4/n2/full/nri1265-c1.html) We certainly hear about this issue from many graduates and others who are anxious about how much of their new ideas they feel they can share openly. Ownership of the idea that then leads to a discovery or to a business that succeeds is close to the heart of individuals. And how this ownership of the discovery is subsequently commercialised is also an important debate for Universities, individual researchers, the venture capitalists and management teams.
The other part of the controversy is whether or not it was smart to publish and “give away” cell lines and the mice to those who might be competitors. This is a more serious argument and some think that the patenting regime can be stifling and restrictive to the ultimate benefits of society.
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v23/n9/full/nbt0905-1047.html
There are probably three major themes to this debate. First – whether all new knowledge generated through public funding actually belongs to society anyway – in which case it should be published for wider dissemination and this includes any commercial exploitation. The second line of argument has been that the way patenting and licensing is done – starts to become increasingly defensive and is a broken system and therefore acts against the best interests of what it is actually supposed to encourage. The third is simply that unless one has a system that can be understood the capital and resources from organisations that have the capability to commercialise the science will just not do so.
I am not knowledgeable enough to fully comment on this third aspect – but it seems to me that if the opportunity is big enough and the deals are there to be done, is the commercial exploitation not more to do with management and markets than about ring fencing the ownership of IP? In some industries now (e.g. internet) there is a greater push for open source and open innovation and in most technology clusters there is increasing collaborative working.
For those of us – who need to understand how or why this science is significant there is a layman’s description of the impact of monoclonal antibodies. http://www.dana.org/news/publications/detail.aspx?id=4278
Sunday, 15 November 2009
One of the fastest internet companies with cash and profits!
Once again the audiences of Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge were treated to some insights into entrepreneurship by asomeone who is very modest about his achievements. His initial take was that he just bumbled along for about 7 years from 1990 to 1997, living off his wife’s success – a former classmate from the Indian Institute of Management and now a successful top flight executive. He had tried many ideas, projects, consulting assignments and then started to follow a pattern that he saw all around him – that people seemed to open magazines from the back, spent time on the jobs pages before turning to the contents of the magazine.
So he and his nascent team and partner formulated a jobs based website, developed business models that were based on revenues of advertising from prospective employers. All this while bootstrapping the business out of bedrooms and garage spaces in Delhi (note – not in Silicon Valley!).
The company realised the basic proposition had to be that they had content – of jobs. So they took in all the newspaper advertisement – from 29 newspapers and uploaded the jobs onto the website – www.naukri.com
This was an initial big hit – huge numbers of visits and pretty soon it became apparent to employers that they had better use this channel as well. They now get over 200million unique page views per month. The company has become the hub of the Indian talent market and this has enabled the company to develop multiple streams of revenue; advertising being the mainstay.
When they reached $80,000 revenues with 9 staff, they started to receive visits from “smart MBAs” who had joined venture capital and were now riding the wave of hype around the dot com bubble. He was amazed and turned down offers of venture capital, all of which were placing his company at around $9m valuation. Sanjeev argued that had he taken the money and tried to invest it at the time – his balance sheet would have gone negative! He jokes – that they were somewhat paralyzed by the fear of “wasting the investors’ trust and cash”
Eventually – they took in money from ICICI and being cautious – he says with a wry smile – they put the cash into deposit accounts until they could figure out a really strong growth strategy. The injection of capital did give the confidence to go for growth. The initial test of strategy came when the sales director suggested that they grow the sales team as he had seen a direct correlation between increased sales people on the ground and increased sales. So – although they are a web company, they now have over 50 offices in India and neighbouring countries and around 1600 staff, most of who are in sales. They have 200 staff that develop technical solutions to meet the needs of the recruitment market.
This is a rapid growth business by any measure and the founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani is modest to say that the early days were action packed rather than strategic. It is only with the early success that the confidence grew to start to establish a firm strategy for growth, by diversifying the revenue streams, hiring people – based on generous reward structures and eventually by placing memorable advertisements on television to drive traffic to the web http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-89JndcGK4
The growth strategy was starting to build on gaining deeper insights into why people moved (at least in India) and one of the key reasons turns out to be disillusionment with the boss! This is what they used in their advertising and the character created became a household term for “nasty boss”!
What has Sanjeev learned from his business and entrepreneurial career?
If a problem has already been solved – don’t do it
Ensure that whatever business idea you come up with scalable – especially if you want to attract investors.
Talk and listen to customers – build deep insights
Focus – do one thing and do it well
Have the courage to take advantage of being a first mover. This can give you market leadership
Improve continuously – and do it quickly and keep it moving (something they call fail fast in silicon valley)
To build teams – be prepared to share your wealth
Retain a frugal mindset at all times – it helps if things get tough
Put yourself into ecosystems where you can get lucky! (Not sure if we should rely on luck for growth – but it sure helps if you get lucky!)
What has been the biggest mistake he has made – hiring for convenience rather than for quality!
Sanjeev runs a blog on http://www.sanjeevbikhchandani.com/
He has also kindly given us his investor presentation
http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf
Once again the audiences of Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge were treated to some insights into entrepreneurship by asomeone who is very modest about his achievements. His initial take was that he just bumbled along for about 7 years from 1990 to 1997, living off his wife’s success – a former classmate from the Indian Institute of Management and now a successful top flight executive. He had tried many ideas, projects, consulting assignments and then started to follow a pattern that he saw all around him – that people seemed to open magazines from the back, spent time on the jobs pages before turning to the contents of the magazine.
So he and his nascent team and partner formulated a jobs based website, developed business models that were based on revenues of advertising from prospective employers. All this while bootstrapping the business out of bedrooms and garage spaces in Delhi (note – not in Silicon Valley!).
The company realised the basic proposition had to be that they had content – of jobs. So they took in all the newspaper advertisement – from 29 newspapers and uploaded the jobs onto the website – www.naukri.com
This was an initial big hit – huge numbers of visits and pretty soon it became apparent to employers that they had better use this channel as well. They now get over 200million unique page views per month. The company has become the hub of the Indian talent market and this has enabled the company to develop multiple streams of revenue; advertising being the mainstay.
When they reached $80,000 revenues with 9 staff, they started to receive visits from “smart MBAs” who had joined venture capital and were now riding the wave of hype around the dot com bubble. He was amazed and turned down offers of venture capital, all of which were placing his company at around $9m valuation. Sanjeev argued that had he taken the money and tried to invest it at the time – his balance sheet would have gone negative! He jokes – that they were somewhat paralyzed by the fear of “wasting the investors’ trust and cash”
Eventually – they took in money from ICICI and being cautious – he says with a wry smile – they put the cash into deposit accounts until they could figure out a really strong growth strategy. The injection of capital did give the confidence to go for growth. The initial test of strategy came when the sales director suggested that they grow the sales team as he had seen a direct correlation between increased sales people on the ground and increased sales. So – although they are a web company, they now have over 50 offices in India and neighbouring countries and around 1600 staff, most of who are in sales. They have 200 staff that develop technical solutions to meet the needs of the recruitment market.
This is a rapid growth business by any measure and the founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani is modest to say that the early days were action packed rather than strategic. It is only with the early success that the confidence grew to start to establish a firm strategy for growth, by diversifying the revenue streams, hiring people – based on generous reward structures and eventually by placing memorable advertisements on television to drive traffic to the web http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-89JndcGK4
The growth strategy was starting to build on gaining deeper insights into why people moved (at least in India) and one of the key reasons turns out to be disillusionment with the boss! This is what they used in their advertising and the character created became a household term for “nasty boss”!
What has Sanjeev learned from his business and entrepreneurial career?
If a problem has already been solved – don’t do it
Ensure that whatever business idea you come up with scalable – especially if you want to attract investors.
Talk and listen to customers – build deep insights
Focus – do one thing and do it well
Have the courage to take advantage of being a first mover. This can give you market leadership
Improve continuously – and do it quickly and keep it moving (something they call fail fast in silicon valley)
To build teams – be prepared to share your wealth
Retain a frugal mindset at all times – it helps if things get tough
Put yourself into ecosystems where you can get lucky! (Not sure if we should rely on luck for growth – but it sure helps if you get lucky!)
What has been the biggest mistake he has made – hiring for convenience rather than for quality!
Sanjeev runs a blog on http://www.sanjeevbikhchandani.com/
He has also kindly given us his investor presentation
http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf
So he and his nascent team and partner formulated a jobs based website, developed business models that were based on revenues of advertising from prospective employers. All this while bootstrapping the business out of bedrooms and garage spaces in Delhi (note – not in Silicon Valley!).
The company realised the basic proposition had to be that they had content – of jobs. So they took in all the newspaper advertisement – from 29 newspapers and uploaded the jobs onto the website – www.naukri.com
This was an initial big hit – huge numbers of visits and pretty soon it became apparent to employers that they had better use this channel as well. They now get over 200million unique page views per month. The company has become the hub of the Indian talent market and this has enabled the company to develop multiple streams of revenue; advertising being the mainstay.
When they reached $80,000 revenues with 9 staff, they started to receive visits from “smart MBAs” who had joined venture capital and were now riding the wave of hype around the dot com bubble. He was amazed and turned down offers of venture capital, all of which were placing his company at around $9m valuation. Sanjeev argued that had he taken the money and tried to invest it at the time – his balance sheet would have gone negative! He jokes – that they were somewhat paralyzed by the fear of “wasting the investors’ trust and cash”
Eventually – they took in money from ICICI and being cautious – he says with a wry smile – they put the cash into deposit accounts until they could figure out a really strong growth strategy. The injection of capital did give the confidence to go for growth. The initial test of strategy came when the sales director suggested that they grow the sales team as he had seen a direct correlation between increased sales people on the ground and increased sales. So – although they are a web company, they now have over 50 offices in India and neighbouring countries and around 1600 staff, most of who are in sales. They have 200 staff that develop technical solutions to meet the needs of the recruitment market.
This is a rapid growth business by any measure and the founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani is modest to say that the early days were action packed rather than strategic. It is only with the early success that the confidence grew to start to establish a firm strategy for growth, by diversifying the revenue streams, hiring people – based on generous reward structures and eventually by placing memorable advertisements on television to drive traffic to the web http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-89JndcGK4
The growth strategy was starting to build on gaining deeper insights into why people moved (at least in India) and one of the key reasons turns out to be disillusionment with the boss! This is what they used in their advertising and the character created became a household term for “nasty boss”!
What has Sanjeev learned from his business and entrepreneurial career?
If a problem has already been solved – don’t do it
Ensure that whatever business idea you come up with scalable – especially if you want to attract investors.
Talk and listen to customers – build deep insights
Focus – do one thing and do it well
Have the courage to take advantage of being a first mover. This can give you market leadership
Improve continuously – and do it quickly and keep it moving (something they call fail fast in silicon valley)
To build teams – be prepared to share your wealth
Retain a frugal mindset at all times – it helps if things get tough
Put yourself into ecosystems where you can get lucky! (Not sure if we should rely on luck for growth – but it sure helps if you get lucky!)
What has been the biggest mistake he has made – hiring for convenience rather than for quality!
Sanjeev runs a blog on http://www.sanjeevbikhchandani.com/
He has also kindly given us his investor presentation
http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf
Once again the audiences of Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge were treated to some insights into entrepreneurship by asomeone who is very modest about his achievements. His initial take was that he just bumbled along for about 7 years from 1990 to 1997, living off his wife’s success – a former classmate from the Indian Institute of Management and now a successful top flight executive. He had tried many ideas, projects, consulting assignments and then started to follow a pattern that he saw all around him – that people seemed to open magazines from the back, spent time on the jobs pages before turning to the contents of the magazine.
So he and his nascent team and partner formulated a jobs based website, developed business models that were based on revenues of advertising from prospective employers. All this while bootstrapping the business out of bedrooms and garage spaces in Delhi (note – not in Silicon Valley!).
The company realised the basic proposition had to be that they had content – of jobs. So they took in all the newspaper advertisement – from 29 newspapers and uploaded the jobs onto the website – www.naukri.com
This was an initial big hit – huge numbers of visits and pretty soon it became apparent to employers that they had better use this channel as well. They now get over 200million unique page views per month. The company has become the hub of the Indian talent market and this has enabled the company to develop multiple streams of revenue; advertising being the mainstay.
When they reached $80,000 revenues with 9 staff, they started to receive visits from “smart MBAs” who had joined venture capital and were now riding the wave of hype around the dot com bubble. He was amazed and turned down offers of venture capital, all of which were placing his company at around $9m valuation. Sanjeev argued that had he taken the money and tried to invest it at the time – his balance sheet would have gone negative! He jokes – that they were somewhat paralyzed by the fear of “wasting the investors’ trust and cash”
Eventually – they took in money from ICICI and being cautious – he says with a wry smile – they put the cash into deposit accounts until they could figure out a really strong growth strategy. The injection of capital did give the confidence to go for growth. The initial test of strategy came when the sales director suggested that they grow the sales team as he had seen a direct correlation between increased sales people on the ground and increased sales. So – although they are a web company, they now have over 50 offices in India and neighbouring countries and around 1600 staff, most of who are in sales. They have 200 staff that develop technical solutions to meet the needs of the recruitment market.
This is a rapid growth business by any measure and the founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani is modest to say that the early days were action packed rather than strategic. It is only with the early success that the confidence grew to start to establish a firm strategy for growth, by diversifying the revenue streams, hiring people – based on generous reward structures and eventually by placing memorable advertisements on television to drive traffic to the web http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-89JndcGK4
The growth strategy was starting to build on gaining deeper insights into why people moved (at least in India) and one of the key reasons turns out to be disillusionment with the boss! This is what they used in their advertising and the character created became a household term for “nasty boss”!
What has Sanjeev learned from his business and entrepreneurial career?
If a problem has already been solved – don’t do it
Ensure that whatever business idea you come up with scalable – especially if you want to attract investors.
Talk and listen to customers – build deep insights
Focus – do one thing and do it well
Have the courage to take advantage of being a first mover. This can give you market leadership
Improve continuously – and do it quickly and keep it moving (something they call fail fast in silicon valley)
To build teams – be prepared to share your wealth
Retain a frugal mindset at all times – it helps if things get tough
Put yourself into ecosystems where you can get lucky! (Not sure if we should rely on luck for growth – but it sure helps if you get lucky!)
What has been the biggest mistake he has made – hiring for convenience rather than for quality!
Sanjeev runs a blog on http://www.sanjeevbikhchandani.com/
He has also kindly given us his investor presentation
http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf
Friday, 6 November 2009
Creating opportunities in technology - Experience from two Business Angels on Enterprise Tuesday
Having just spoken with David Cleevely and Andy Richards about their talk(s) on Enterprise Tuesday on the 10th of November 2009, - they see about 2 - 3 ideas per week and have to try and filter out those that excite them enough to invest in. What are the criteria by which they do this and how can we learn to use their insights and knowledge to create, sort, filter and hopefully make winning decisions on?
They will use examples from their portfolio of experiences - which include huge successes, middling companies and the odd failed business to run thorugh a general framework we can use.
Here are some headlines:
o ideas are cheap (need to be great not just good)
o timing is crucial (things are in the air; by the time you have recognised them it may be too late; on the other hand those deep in the know may be too early)
o fashions hold more sway than they should (eg Web 2.0) - so watch for the Gartner hype cycles
o you need to stress test things by talking them through (preferably with lots of people). Would be entrepreneurs who hold cards close to their chest are to be suspected. (those who have done it a few times can be given more leeway)
o the proposal should break the established dogma
o there’s a trigger point (which if missed means no funding).
David and Andy are highly entertaining and animated presenters, they are on national and international platforms when it comes to their contributions to policy, entrepreneurship and corporate lives.
I can't wait to hear them and look forward to chairing the time keeping as I am sure the Q+A session will run and run!
They will use examples from their portfolio of experiences - which include huge successes, middling companies and the odd failed business to run thorugh a general framework we can use.
Here are some headlines:
o ideas are cheap (need to be great not just good)
o timing is crucial (things are in the air; by the time you have recognised them it may be too late; on the other hand those deep in the know may be too early)
o fashions hold more sway than they should (eg Web 2.0) - so watch for the Gartner hype cycles
o you need to stress test things by talking them through (preferably with lots of people). Would be entrepreneurs who hold cards close to their chest are to be suspected. (those who have done it a few times can be given more leeway)
o the proposal should break the established dogma
o there’s a trigger point (which if missed means no funding).
David and Andy are highly entertaining and animated presenters, they are on national and international platforms when it comes to their contributions to policy, entrepreneurship and corporate lives.
I can't wait to hear them and look forward to chairing the time keeping as I am sure the Q+A session will run and run!
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Rapid Growth Business Enterprise Tuesday 3rd November
Sanjeev Bikchandani - Founder of InfoEdge and therefore founder of several internet companies in India will be speaking about growing rapidly.
He started as a typical "garage" company in India and now employs nearly 1600 people across more than 50 offices. The internet businesses range from the biggest - "naukri.com" - which is about recruitment through to real estate and other services.
We normally hear about internet businesses from Silicon Valley and rarely from a "developing country" but here is a case of working against red tape, limited pools of experienced internet teams, an ecosystem that is still new to internet savvy businesses, challenging infrastructure etc.,
InfoEdge became the first internet company to list on the Indian stock market. The company has taken venture capital from global players and has a wonderful compound growth rate with a cash positive balance sheet. For those who would like to drill a bit deeper before the talk please see a link to the investor presentations made a few weeks ago - http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf
Sanjeev is a charismatic, high energy entrepreneur who will talk about the key aspects of growing a business rapidly. Not wishing to steal his show - the talk will include how and when to be first to market - but that too in one that is emerging and therefore how to know if it is really big (with unmet problems to solve) and how to put together a team that can help to deliver on the vision and plans. There are more points he will make - but for now that is enough to whet our appetites.
By the way Sanjeev is flying over at his own cost and that makes him a sponsor as well! I am looking forward to the talk and the ensuing Q+A
He started as a typical "garage" company in India and now employs nearly 1600 people across more than 50 offices. The internet businesses range from the biggest - "naukri.com" - which is about recruitment through to real estate and other services.
We normally hear about internet businesses from Silicon Valley and rarely from a "developing country" but here is a case of working against red tape, limited pools of experienced internet teams, an ecosystem that is still new to internet savvy businesses, challenging infrastructure etc.,
InfoEdge became the first internet company to list on the Indian stock market. The company has taken venture capital from global players and has a wonderful compound growth rate with a cash positive balance sheet. For those who would like to drill a bit deeper before the talk please see a link to the investor presentations made a few weeks ago - http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf
Sanjeev is a charismatic, high energy entrepreneur who will talk about the key aspects of growing a business rapidly. Not wishing to steal his show - the talk will include how and when to be first to market - but that too in one that is emerging and therefore how to know if it is really big (with unmet problems to solve) and how to put together a team that can help to deliver on the vision and plans. There are more points he will make - but for now that is enough to whet our appetites.
By the way Sanjeev is flying over at his own cost and that makes him a sponsor as well! I am looking forward to the talk and the ensuing Q+A
Friday, 23 October 2009
From deep science to a cool product
Prof Henning Sirringhaus from the Cavendish Labs at Cambridge, Martin Jackson of Plastic Logic and Bill Earner of Amadeus Capital Partners talked to a packed audience of around 400 graduates and members of the business community on how and why they have taken a tough 10 year+ journey to commercialise deep science.
From what I could gather, it started with the scientists looking at how to take the technical attributes of passing light through plastic and the convenience of plastic (it is light and flexible) to see if a product could be developed. One of the driving forces of the innovation that followed seems to be about solving the problem of convenience for people on the move.
People who need to read books, documents, articles, newspapers and myriad other content have two choices at the moment. Carrying heavy quantities of documents or trying to read on laptops – where due to the intensity of the way the screen is backlit – in the end it gets tiring. The inventors, investors and management of the project saw this as a global unmet need.
Curiously so have Sony, Kindle and others who are all rushing to market with eReaders. After the iphone this product line is likely to be the next big thing in the “boys toys” category and will likely revolutionise our reading behaviours as prices come plummeting downward in the years ahead.
So – the journey of plastic electronics as it has been labelled – started a long time ago and the team made a choice to enter the market with an eReader – due to be launched at a major event in January 2010. Hopefully they are just in time when compared to other products that are coming out this winter – before the Christmas of 2009.
The team has bigger plans for their patents and inventions, but the story is not so much about technology as it is about faith, belief, entrepreneurial risk and talented people.
The early conversations between Henning, Sir Richard Friend and Dr Hermann Hauser were formative and influential. All three eminent being physicists. Hermann being the serial entrepreneur and venture capitalists has the experience and instinct to know when to back something. It is also his vision for the next big product – and the potential to create an industry that has helped to raise over $250m dollars, research grants and subsidies for setting up a factory in Dresden. With that strong vision and business credibility, the team also has its “scientific rock stars” – some early exposure to doing business in emerging technologies and gradually a build up of a strong commercial and manufacturing team. It is probably this combination that has allowed Plastic Logic to go further than might be expected for a company that has been in “start-up” mode for over 10 years.
Over the 10 years Plastic Logic has tried a variety of business models, including trying to license the technology, but found that because it was unproven, the big manufacturers were unwilling to take it on. As a result of this market feedback, the team decided to set up its own factory and were fortunate in finding support from the government in Saxony - keen to attract a cutting edge science based company. So – the focus is on scaling up from a laboratory project about the light emitting properties of plastic to a real product that consumers can buy! This is a huge transition and requires major shifts in the talent pool from scientists through project managers, sales teams, factory skills, etc.,
How does a team sustain its motivation to go through all the various change points from a scientific breakthrough in 1998/99 to the prospect of a product launch into a growing market in 2010?
The basic answer seems to be about the excitement of creating an industry through the launch of a product. In essence – where the scale and scope of the opportunity far outweighs any sense of barriers or risk! The opportunity is seen to be vast and the team wants to be in a leadership position!
My main takeaway thought was the comment that Henning made – when the whole enterprise started he asked himself – should he focus on publishing and staying “Pure” or should he devote any time to the venturing process. At the time he was an unestablished young academic. He chose to do both! Now he is a young professor, inventor and initiator of a company that could well turn out to be at the forefront of plastic electronics. As Prof Andy Hopper said last year and on the video (see www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/resources) you can have your cake and eat it!
From what I could gather, it started with the scientists looking at how to take the technical attributes of passing light through plastic and the convenience of plastic (it is light and flexible) to see if a product could be developed. One of the driving forces of the innovation that followed seems to be about solving the problem of convenience for people on the move.
People who need to read books, documents, articles, newspapers and myriad other content have two choices at the moment. Carrying heavy quantities of documents or trying to read on laptops – where due to the intensity of the way the screen is backlit – in the end it gets tiring. The inventors, investors and management of the project saw this as a global unmet need.
Curiously so have Sony, Kindle and others who are all rushing to market with eReaders. After the iphone this product line is likely to be the next big thing in the “boys toys” category and will likely revolutionise our reading behaviours as prices come plummeting downward in the years ahead.
So – the journey of plastic electronics as it has been labelled – started a long time ago and the team made a choice to enter the market with an eReader – due to be launched at a major event in January 2010. Hopefully they are just in time when compared to other products that are coming out this winter – before the Christmas of 2009.
The team has bigger plans for their patents and inventions, but the story is not so much about technology as it is about faith, belief, entrepreneurial risk and talented people.
The early conversations between Henning, Sir Richard Friend and Dr Hermann Hauser were formative and influential. All three eminent being physicists. Hermann being the serial entrepreneur and venture capitalists has the experience and instinct to know when to back something. It is also his vision for the next big product – and the potential to create an industry that has helped to raise over $250m dollars, research grants and subsidies for setting up a factory in Dresden. With that strong vision and business credibility, the team also has its “scientific rock stars” – some early exposure to doing business in emerging technologies and gradually a build up of a strong commercial and manufacturing team. It is probably this combination that has allowed Plastic Logic to go further than might be expected for a company that has been in “start-up” mode for over 10 years.
Over the 10 years Plastic Logic has tried a variety of business models, including trying to license the technology, but found that because it was unproven, the big manufacturers were unwilling to take it on. As a result of this market feedback, the team decided to set up its own factory and were fortunate in finding support from the government in Saxony - keen to attract a cutting edge science based company. So – the focus is on scaling up from a laboratory project about the light emitting properties of plastic to a real product that consumers can buy! This is a huge transition and requires major shifts in the talent pool from scientists through project managers, sales teams, factory skills, etc.,
How does a team sustain its motivation to go through all the various change points from a scientific breakthrough in 1998/99 to the prospect of a product launch into a growing market in 2010?
The basic answer seems to be about the excitement of creating an industry through the launch of a product. In essence – where the scale and scope of the opportunity far outweighs any sense of barriers or risk! The opportunity is seen to be vast and the team wants to be in a leadership position!
My main takeaway thought was the comment that Henning made – when the whole enterprise started he asked himself – should he focus on publishing and staying “Pure” or should he devote any time to the venturing process. At the time he was an unestablished young academic. He chose to do both! Now he is a young professor, inventor and initiator of a company that could well turn out to be at the forefront of plastic electronics. As Prof Andy Hopper said last year and on the video (see www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/resources) you can have your cake and eat it!
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Understanding the needs of the market – Learning from Ryanair
Tuesday on October 27th 2009. See www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk
Kell Ryan, the recently retired marketing Director of Ryanair has kindly agreed to speak to the audience of Enterprise Tuesday on the 27th of October 2009. Kell is a highly experienced marketing professional, having worked in the airline industry for many years before joining the team at Ryanair.
Ryanair has been a great success as a low cost carrier. It has brought benefits to many people beyond price reduction. People can take short term jobs in other countries; get short week end breaks, host hen nights and parties in all manner of cities, bringing tourism wealth from those who have to those who can benefit! If we want to learn to think about marketing, customers needs and having the courage to make new rules in the market place – we need to look at how one of the more successful companies does it.
Kell Ryan has agreed to tell us about the early days of Ryanair marketing, their innovations and how they value both acquiring and retaining customers through meeting the key needs of customers. Importance of customer retention, Impact of the Internet, Ancillary revenue /activity, Innovation on costs, Business model, Simplicity of Operations, Branding /Marketing and that Price is King !
Kell is charming and you will learn from him the hard nosed lessons you need to take away about how to be innovative with marketing. These lessons will generalise to other industry sectors. I can’t wait to hear from him. I hold the Otto Monsted Guest Professorship at Aarhus School of Business in Denmark and it is only possible for me to even consider such a post and to deliver on it through the growth and development of Ryanair.
Kell Ryan, the recently retired marketing Director of Ryanair has kindly agreed to speak to the audience of Enterprise Tuesday on the 27th of October 2009. Kell is a highly experienced marketing professional, having worked in the airline industry for many years before joining the team at Ryanair.
Ryanair has been a great success as a low cost carrier. It has brought benefits to many people beyond price reduction. People can take short term jobs in other countries; get short week end breaks, host hen nights and parties in all manner of cities, bringing tourism wealth from those who have to those who can benefit! If we want to learn to think about marketing, customers needs and having the courage to make new rules in the market place – we need to look at how one of the more successful companies does it.
Kell Ryan has agreed to tell us about the early days of Ryanair marketing, their innovations and how they value both acquiring and retaining customers through meeting the key needs of customers. Importance of customer retention, Impact of the Internet, Ancillary revenue /activity, Innovation on costs, Business model, Simplicity of Operations, Branding /Marketing and that Price is King !
Kell is charming and you will learn from him the hard nosed lessons you need to take away about how to be innovative with marketing. These lessons will generalise to other industry sectors. I can’t wait to hear from him. I hold the Otto Monsted Guest Professorship at Aarhus School of Business in Denmark and it is only possible for me to even consider such a post and to deliver on it through the growth and development of Ryanair.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Enterprise Tuesday kicks off on October 20th
This year the flagship course at Cambridge - Enterprise Tuesday which attracts over 1500 registrations and regular attendance of 300 - 400 is set to be a blockbuster! The main reasons is that we have made some radical changes to the format this year. In addition to the classic evenings of very high quality talks followed by networking we also have aligned with "Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge" and are part hosts to a debate at the Cambridge Union (on a Thursday!). We are also doing a networking only evening - having invited 20+ of the local successes - our Entrepreneurs in residence - to interact with the audience. This will be hosted in the magnificent setting of the Judge Business School over two floors.
There are also going to be "Live" rehearsals of elevator pitches and panel discussions on several evenings.
Beyond the format changes - the speaker line up - the headlines are as follows:
Plastic Logic founder Prof Henning Sirringhaus with his investment and management team members. This is a big current story as the research and the commercial ambition is to stimulate the start up - not just of a company - but also of an industry - in plastic electronics.
We then have Kell Ryan - to tell us about meeting customer needs. He recently retired from marketing position at Ryan Air (The name is no coincidence).
Sanjeev Bikchandani is coming over from India to talk about growing his business. It is one of the fastest growing internet companies around - and the biggest job site in India. He is a dynamic entrepreneur and is coming over just to do our talk!
David Cleevely and Andy Richards are highly successful Cambridge based Business angels and serial entrepreneurs. David is in wireless and telecoms while Andy is in biotechnology. Both are highly influential in the investment community and in their industries.
E T will be on a Thursday this year to make best connections to our regulars - and the guest line up includes the founders of LInkedIn, Twitter etc., The event has its own website - SVC2C.
Finally we hear from a panel of recent alumni of Enterprise Tuesday. People who have been inspired to get started with their own companies. They will share with us the why and the how on the evening. It is bound to be animated. The names are less famous - but the energy and the future prospects are fabulous.
Next term - we kick off with Prof Chris Winter who was co-founder of Cambridge Antibodies. He has done a number of other companies in biotech and is a hugely respected academic.
In order not to protract the blog - let me say that the last of the series is with Warren East from ARM - and I am hoping we will get as much of a public view as possible about the battle lines between ARM and Intel
There are also going to be "Live" rehearsals of elevator pitches and panel discussions on several evenings.
Beyond the format changes - the speaker line up - the headlines are as follows:
Plastic Logic founder Prof Henning Sirringhaus with his investment and management team members. This is a big current story as the research and the commercial ambition is to stimulate the start up - not just of a company - but also of an industry - in plastic electronics.
We then have Kell Ryan - to tell us about meeting customer needs. He recently retired from marketing position at Ryan Air (The name is no coincidence).
Sanjeev Bikchandani is coming over from India to talk about growing his business. It is one of the fastest growing internet companies around - and the biggest job site in India. He is a dynamic entrepreneur and is coming over just to do our talk!
David Cleevely and Andy Richards are highly successful Cambridge based Business angels and serial entrepreneurs. David is in wireless and telecoms while Andy is in biotechnology. Both are highly influential in the investment community and in their industries.
E T will be on a Thursday this year to make best connections to our regulars - and the guest line up includes the founders of LInkedIn, Twitter etc., The event has its own website - SVC2C.
Finally we hear from a panel of recent alumni of Enterprise Tuesday. People who have been inspired to get started with their own companies. They will share with us the why and the how on the evening. It is bound to be animated. The names are less famous - but the energy and the future prospects are fabulous.
Next term - we kick off with Prof Chris Winter who was co-founder of Cambridge Antibodies. He has done a number of other companies in biotech and is a hugely respected academic.
In order not to protract the blog - let me say that the last of the series is with Warren East from ARM - and I am hoping we will get as much of a public view as possible about the battle lines between ARM and Intel
Thursday, 24 September 2009
WHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS A REAL OPTION – Learning from Plastic Logic
Prof Henning Sirringhaus is a leading authority on organic semiconductors. Working within the Cambridge environment he and his business contacts saw the huge potential for the application of this deep science research to the possibility of creating a whole new industry based on the fact that plactics can carry current!
Henning is founder, director and continues to be a shareholder in Plastic Logic. Meanwhile the commercial team that was formed around it included Dr Hermann Hauser, serial entrepreneur, investor, physicist, eternal optimist and visionary. Bit by bit they formed a formidable team of scientists, technologists, commercial teams and through a series of dead ends, diversions and sometimes distractions they have raised over £250m in venture capital, got a factory underway in Dresden and are now launching their own product.
Plastic Logic might be the first company within a new industry? It is also potentially a huge success story based on over 20 years of research and earlier attempts at commercialisation of near to market technologies.
But who can tell – at this early stage if Plastic Logic will actually launch a new industry. Meanwhile we look to understand how and why the founders, investors and shareholders continue to have faith in a venture with long gestation periods. Most businesses operate on quarterly cycles and get impatient if there are no sales. What motivates this group of individuals and teams of technical, commercial and scientific talent to pursue Plastic Logic.
From the presentations and discussion by Henning Sirringhaus, Bill Earner (Amadeus Capital Partners) and Martin Jackson (Plastic Logic) we hope to find out more about:
Personal motivations; recognition of opportunities; the types of skills needed at different stages of the venture; risks and rewards. We also hope to learn about whether or not dilution of shares and ownership affects motivation of founders; how the funding cycles have gone and been managed and how teams have changed.
Based on this opening lecture we expect to set the scene for the remainder of the 11 lectures and networking events to bring you Enterprise Tuesday.
Here are some references for the business and academic communities:
Plasctic logic – press releases; home page www.plasticlogic.com www.plasticlogic.com/news
Plastic Logic demo www.youtube.com/watch?v=0znv3V-GsNk
Cavendish labs – Henning’s work www.phy.cam.ac.uk/people/sirringhaush.php
Amadeus capital partners www.amadeuscapital.com – investors in Plastic Logic
A Highly π-Stacked Organic Semiconductor for Thin Film Transistors Based on Fused Thiophenes
Xiao-Chang Li, Henning Sirringhaus, Francis Garnier, Andrew B. Holmes, Stephen C. Moratti, Neil Feeder, William Clegg, Simon J. Teat, and Richard H. Friend
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1998, 120 (9), pp 2206–2207 Publication Date (Web): February 24, 1998
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja9735968
Effects of Packing Structure on the Optoelectronic and Charge Transport Properties in Poly(9,9-di-n-octylfluorene-alt-benzothiadiazole) Carrie L. Donley, Jana Zaumseil, Jens W. Andreasen, Martin M. Nielsen, Henning Sirringhaus, Richard H. Friend, and Ji-Seon Kim
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2005, 127 (37), pp 12890–12899 Publication Date (Web): August 25, 2005
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja051891j
Surface Tension and Fluid Flow Driven Self-Assembly of Ordered ZnO Nanorod Films for High-Performance Field Effect Transistors
Baoquan Sun and Henning Sirringhaus
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128 (50), pp 16231–16237 Publication Date (Web): December 1, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja065242z
Binary Nanoparticle Superlattices in the Semiconductor−Semiconductor System: CdTe and CdSe
Zhuoying Chen, Jenny Moore, Guillaume Radtke, Henning Sirringhaus, and Stephen O'Brien
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2007, 129 (50), pp 15702–15709
Publication Date (Web): November 23, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja076698z
Henning is founder, director and continues to be a shareholder in Plastic Logic. Meanwhile the commercial team that was formed around it included Dr Hermann Hauser, serial entrepreneur, investor, physicist, eternal optimist and visionary. Bit by bit they formed a formidable team of scientists, technologists, commercial teams and through a series of dead ends, diversions and sometimes distractions they have raised over £250m in venture capital, got a factory underway in Dresden and are now launching their own product.
Plastic Logic might be the first company within a new industry? It is also potentially a huge success story based on over 20 years of research and earlier attempts at commercialisation of near to market technologies.
But who can tell – at this early stage if Plastic Logic will actually launch a new industry. Meanwhile we look to understand how and why the founders, investors and shareholders continue to have faith in a venture with long gestation periods. Most businesses operate on quarterly cycles and get impatient if there are no sales. What motivates this group of individuals and teams of technical, commercial and scientific talent to pursue Plastic Logic.
From the presentations and discussion by Henning Sirringhaus, Bill Earner (Amadeus Capital Partners) and Martin Jackson (Plastic Logic) we hope to find out more about:
Personal motivations; recognition of opportunities; the types of skills needed at different stages of the venture; risks and rewards. We also hope to learn about whether or not dilution of shares and ownership affects motivation of founders; how the funding cycles have gone and been managed and how teams have changed.
Based on this opening lecture we expect to set the scene for the remainder of the 11 lectures and networking events to bring you Enterprise Tuesday.
Here are some references for the business and academic communities:
Plasctic logic – press releases; home page www.plasticlogic.com www.plasticlogic.com/news
Plastic Logic demo www.youtube.com/watch?v=0znv3V-GsNk
Cavendish labs – Henning’s work www.phy.cam.ac.uk/people/sirringhaush.php
Amadeus capital partners www.amadeuscapital.com – investors in Plastic Logic
A Highly π-Stacked Organic Semiconductor for Thin Film Transistors Based on Fused Thiophenes
Xiao-Chang Li, Henning Sirringhaus, Francis Garnier, Andrew B. Holmes, Stephen C. Moratti, Neil Feeder, William Clegg, Simon J. Teat, and Richard H. Friend
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1998, 120 (9), pp 2206–2207 Publication Date (Web): February 24, 1998
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja9735968
Effects of Packing Structure on the Optoelectronic and Charge Transport Properties in Poly(9,9-di-n-octylfluorene-alt-benzothiadiazole) Carrie L. Donley, Jana Zaumseil, Jens W. Andreasen, Martin M. Nielsen, Henning Sirringhaus, Richard H. Friend, and Ji-Seon Kim
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2005, 127 (37), pp 12890–12899 Publication Date (Web): August 25, 2005
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja051891j
Surface Tension and Fluid Flow Driven Self-Assembly of Ordered ZnO Nanorod Films for High-Performance Field Effect Transistors
Baoquan Sun and Henning Sirringhaus
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128 (50), pp 16231–16237 Publication Date (Web): December 1, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja065242z
Binary Nanoparticle Superlattices in the Semiconductor−Semiconductor System: CdTe and CdSe
Zhuoying Chen, Jenny Moore, Guillaume Radtke, Henning Sirringhaus, and Stephen O'Brien
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2007, 129 (50), pp 15702–15709
Publication Date (Web): November 23, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja076698z
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Mike Lynch tells it like it is
Mike Lynch – CEO of Autonomy comes with a very credible track record – especially for a technology entrepreneur in the UK (and Cambridge). He is one of the very few people I know that has taken a company from the bedroom to being a $500m sales company in software/high tech; done IPOs, acquired a US competitor and remained CEO. The usual story in the UK is that the founders are either fired by the investors in one of the funding rounds or make an exit to take up new careers as business angels, non execs and so forth. In a way the high tech founders are serial entrepreneurs and not global CEOs.
Mike talked about building the dream team – in fact he talked about how to do this and what the background grunt and grind is – to make such a thing happen. Here are just a few tips:
The need to set a cultural tone to the business – to ensure it remain entrepreneurial by having the vision and energy of the entrepreneurial founder on tap, visible and ensuring the sense of urgency, flexibility, hunger remains at the of the agenda on a daily basis.
To hire the best people- being elitist – because the marginal extra cost of hiring the best person is minimal to the cost of hiring a second best person.
Try and get people who are obsessive about what they do, with a passion for their professional skills. They may get hard to manage – but they will have a preference for action and ensuring their work is to a high standard.
The cultural tone needs to be one where people can admit mistakes , learn and get on. You need to avoid the “myth of properly” – i.e. people who say things like “if only we did things properly around here” – because there is no such thing as properly – only things that meet customer needs.
Ask yourself – who would want to work for entrepreneurs?! the initial pay is low, there is no job security, the journey will be a roller coaster ride..The only reason someone will work for an entrepreneur is because of the likely upside, the fun and because they have bought into a strong vision of the possibilities. On this point Mike also had advice for people applying to work with entrepreneurs who have a strong vision – when you do get invited to join – don’t ask where the coke machine is!!? Entrepreneurs want to hire self-starters, people who “get-it” and will make up their own rules and get things done – not people who need a lot of nursing from the founder.
On the other side to all this rock and roll – is the simple human factor – treat people fairly, reward them fairly, take care of them when they go through some personal life issues. And work hard to kill off politics in the organisation and the potential spread of cultural poison – negativity can hurt.
The implication for leaders is that they need to remain upbeat, energetic, have a sense o f fun and at times be willing to take tough decisions – quickly.
Mike had a lot more to say (about doing business) and he was videoed – and this video will be edited and placed on www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk in due course along with some of the other lectures that have gone onto to site (under resources)
Mike talked about building the dream team – in fact he talked about how to do this and what the background grunt and grind is – to make such a thing happen. Here are just a few tips:
The need to set a cultural tone to the business – to ensure it remain entrepreneurial by having the vision and energy of the entrepreneurial founder on tap, visible and ensuring the sense of urgency, flexibility, hunger remains at the of the agenda on a daily basis.
To hire the best people- being elitist – because the marginal extra cost of hiring the best person is minimal to the cost of hiring a second best person.
Try and get people who are obsessive about what they do, with a passion for their professional skills. They may get hard to manage – but they will have a preference for action and ensuring their work is to a high standard.
The cultural tone needs to be one where people can admit mistakes , learn and get on. You need to avoid the “myth of properly” – i.e. people who say things like “if only we did things properly around here” – because there is no such thing as properly – only things that meet customer needs.
Ask yourself – who would want to work for entrepreneurs?! the initial pay is low, there is no job security, the journey will be a roller coaster ride..The only reason someone will work for an entrepreneur is because of the likely upside, the fun and because they have bought into a strong vision of the possibilities. On this point Mike also had advice for people applying to work with entrepreneurs who have a strong vision – when you do get invited to join – don’t ask where the coke machine is!!? Entrepreneurs want to hire self-starters, people who “get-it” and will make up their own rules and get things done – not people who need a lot of nursing from the founder.
On the other side to all this rock and roll – is the simple human factor – treat people fairly, reward them fairly, take care of them when they go through some personal life issues. And work hard to kill off politics in the organisation and the potential spread of cultural poison – negativity can hurt.
The implication for leaders is that they need to remain upbeat, energetic, have a sense o f fun and at times be willing to take tough decisions – quickly.
Mike had a lot more to say (about doing business) and he was videoed – and this video will be edited and placed on www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk in due course along with some of the other lectures that have gone onto to site (under resources)
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
Tell tale signs of opportunity – surviving the economic winter
When the world is in crisis – it is easy to talk yourself into a gloomy “do nothing” period of inactivity. But is this what entrepreneurs do?
At the moment the reality is that it is hard to find money to get going, customers willing to commit to purchasing anything, budgets that can be signed-off for pilot projects. We even risk current projects being cancelled and the aftermath of senior CEOs from “Bell weather” companies making statements that clearly suggest caution over enterprise!
So, when Dr Hermann Hauser says that the clear signs of a big opportunity is when you can see fast (big) growing markets, have a star team and possess defensible IP (or know how) can see the presence of money in the form of good quality venture capital within a supportive cluster – you look around at the moment and think - No Way!
But – Hermann has been involved in 62 start-ups – four of which have exceeded $1bn valuation – so apart from the macro indicators what else can an entrepreneur see that we can’t?
First – the entrepreneur can see High Quality people – with ideas and the ability to make things happen. Exceptional technology or exceptional ability to articulate a proposition.
Secondly – to ensure that the entrepreneur is in an ecosystem that is conducive to entrepreneurship – and in the case of tech entrepreneurship these would be Silicon Valley, Boston, Cambridge for example. Or if you were trading in spices – you would be on the spice route!! Andy Richards – a Cambridge biotech entrepreneur said that Cambridge was a low risk environment in which to do high risk ventures or as someone else put it les flaterringly – a cluster can be seen as a compost heap – where – when firms die the people are re-cycled!
Sometimes the cold business logic does not always deliver the right answers – for example AT+T were turned off mobile phones, IBM believed there would only ever by a market place for 4 computers and there have been many other gaffes over the decades! A particularly seismic event in technology transfer history is captured in the events that followed the publication of work on the monoclonal antibody. http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/2079/1/wit1.pdf . In the first instance those in decision making positions did not believe that this work should be patented and only later realized the potential of this work in industrial and commercial terms.
In summary we come to belief, passion and a deep understanding of the opportunity (not just the technology). These together with skills to find opportunities, resources and the ability to chip away at customers and markets may be exactly the qualities we need right now in an economic winter.
At the moment the reality is that it is hard to find money to get going, customers willing to commit to purchasing anything, budgets that can be signed-off for pilot projects. We even risk current projects being cancelled and the aftermath of senior CEOs from “Bell weather” companies making statements that clearly suggest caution over enterprise!
So, when Dr Hermann Hauser says that the clear signs of a big opportunity is when you can see fast (big) growing markets, have a star team and possess defensible IP (or know how) can see the presence of money in the form of good quality venture capital within a supportive cluster – you look around at the moment and think - No Way!
But – Hermann has been involved in 62 start-ups – four of which have exceeded $1bn valuation – so apart from the macro indicators what else can an entrepreneur see that we can’t?
First – the entrepreneur can see High Quality people – with ideas and the ability to make things happen. Exceptional technology or exceptional ability to articulate a proposition.
Secondly – to ensure that the entrepreneur is in an ecosystem that is conducive to entrepreneurship – and in the case of tech entrepreneurship these would be Silicon Valley, Boston, Cambridge for example. Or if you were trading in spices – you would be on the spice route!! Andy Richards – a Cambridge biotech entrepreneur said that Cambridge was a low risk environment in which to do high risk ventures or as someone else put it les flaterringly – a cluster can be seen as a compost heap – where – when firms die the people are re-cycled!
Sometimes the cold business logic does not always deliver the right answers – for example AT+T were turned off mobile phones, IBM believed there would only ever by a market place for 4 computers and there have been many other gaffes over the decades! A particularly seismic event in technology transfer history is captured in the events that followed the publication of work on the monoclonal antibody. http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/2079/1/wit1.pdf . In the first instance those in decision making positions did not believe that this work should be patented and only later realized the potential of this work in industrial and commercial terms.
In summary we come to belief, passion and a deep understanding of the opportunity (not just the technology). These together with skills to find opportunities, resources and the ability to chip away at customers and markets may be exactly the qualities we need right now in an economic winter.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Understanding customers needs – The story of Viagogo
As we run into a brick wall of uncertainty in the world of entrepreneurship – I can remember the last time there was a kind of melt down. It had been caused by dangerous over-speculation on the web. I had been told – it’s not cash flow and customers – it’s about the number of clicks and eyeballs!
Well – 8 years later only a handful of companies have made money out of clicks – Google being a star examplar. In the end they too have to be measured by cash flows. What a relief for common sense.
So in the lecture by Eric Baker from Viagogo – a product of Harvard, Stanford, McKinsey, Bain Capital and Silicon Valley it was such a relief that there was so much common sense and a starting point that acknowledged “no customers = no business”.
Viagogo is an on-line ticket exchange business and charges 25% for its service. It holds no inventory of any kind and gets the cash upfront from the transactions. In other words the business makes a good margin and generates cash in providing affordable ways for people to exchange tickets.
So what is the marketing story.
1. Eric has a great personal background in terms of the education he has received. He also gained experience of this kind of business as an employee of Stubhub in USA.
2. He assembled a fabulous board of advisors. Not only is this a source of advice and route to money, but it provides excellent “brand association” by demonstrating the quality of the company he keeps. This helps to open doors, creates an illusion of size and provides huge levels of credibility.
3. Identifying the new trends. More and more people go online to buy tickets rather than queue in shops and at the venue itself. So the credibility of being able to exchange tickets online is established by the new market trends and behaviors.
4. There are an increasing number of other online exchange sites – such as eBay, so the format is easier to explain to consumers.
5. In addition to getting alongside well respected Board members, Eric did early deals with Soccer Clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea to be recognized as an efficient and “official” place for fans to exchange tickets, basically thereby undermining the touts who hang around outside stadia.
6. Eric was clear that his business solves a real problem for people who want to buy tickets. They want secure, reliable service where they know they can sell unwanted tickets and on the other side people want to be sure they are buying the genuine article and not being sold a counterfeit.
7. Below this level of strategic thinking about marketing Viagogo has all the internal disciplines and tactical marketing tools it uses to generate awareness about itself. This includes getting feedback from customers and making sure you stay close to their needs, adjust and adapt your services and products as you grow.
So the big question is why and how an American came to relocate to the UK to start and grow this business? Eric loves sport, learnt about the way this business operates and spotted the gap in Europe. He relocated to London and the rest is becoming history! He has chosen to be a Global entrepreneur and is chasing global dreams.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Entrepreneurial Motivation by Dr Paul Webster and Prof Andy Hopper
Professor Andy Hopper FRS and Dr Paul Webster of Ubisense gave an audience of 400+ at Cambridge University (21st October) a canter through why they started their company and what has kept them going through the roller coaster ride of a new venture.
Paul was introduced to Andy via a common connection and found himself in an environment which was open, flexible and encouraging of enterprise. So he referred to this as motivation through mentoring. The basic idea of the lab in Cambridge was to take an idea, deploy it around the lab and if it worked try to commercialise it. This approach resulted in several companies, the biggest of which was probably Virata.
Other motivations included what we might call “Motivation through motoring” – in other words having an aspiration to be less poor and to buy a nice car! But this came later when the lab that was sponsored by AT+T was suddenly closed and the choices were between taking another job and starting a company with an emerging technology in 3 dimensional location systems (GPS for indoor applications). Paul did not fancy the 9 to 5 routines so he got together with some others in the new venture.
A fortunate meeting took place, through which the team was able to arrange for an internship with a venture capital firm where they did their market research and started to build confidence in the idea, however there were some tough business questions. Was this a GPS system or an RFID system? And who else was doing something like this? So it was difficult to value the company and raise money. They then met Richard Green who had founded Ten Sails as an incubator for ideas in “space and time”. The results of the market research and finding a CEO restored their confidence and motivation to stay the course.
Other forms of motivation included the quality of team that had started to join the company. The Board, the management team and the business angel investors are all described as world class and aligned with the objectives of the .
Ubisense and the team there are part of the wider Cambridge ecosystem – a whole group of companies in wireless, GPS, telecoms etc., So they can measure their own progress and see IPO and trade exits from time to time. They are in good company and this reassures the team. They also compete with firms that are much better funded and have evolved technology that is far superior and this too makes them feel good. There is a sense of urgency to stay ahead of the game. The links with the University and a continous source of talent makes it all the more exciting.
For Paul then – his motivations were varied and included the desire/need to earn; but as can be seen it was not just about “toys” and “technology” but included a desire for affiliation with top people, a desire to be recognized and to achieve success.
Andy Hopper has been an academic researcher for many years and has supervised over 50 PhDs, earned a Fellowship of the Royal Society for his research and the high levels of citation of his work. So he is a hard core academic. Why does he get involved with business?
For Andy – while the University provides that pillar of security he where he has caught the bug for intellectual stimulation – whether nourished by the need for citations or personal ego – it is none the less a compelling pull to continue in academia. The University environment also provides for being kept up to date on international work, new ideas and one of the benefits of this in business is that it reduces surprises of anything that may be going on in a similar field.
As Andy said – In business you can’t get any real insights due to the need to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements and follow tight protocols. But in academia it is possible to learn about new developments due to a very different culture (and you only have to deal with egos!)of publications, peer review and conferences.
There are further debates that rage between academics and entrepreneurs about whether the knowledge is to be exploited for universal gain, national gain or personal gain and if as an academic you want to step into business you need to be comfortable with the arguments.
One of the motivations as an academic engaging in business is that you get to see the practical or tangible output of your research, but if you are at the leading edge and dealing with disruptive technology with uncertain outcomes and timescales it is really hard to raise money. You need to learn about how to do this and what motivates venture capitalists and how they work. You also need to figure out how not to lose your shirt! Without these insights if you do try and embark into business you will soon lose your motivations.
Andy is also motivated by having people around him that he regards as trusted parties, people with whom he can recombine from time to time to start companies, have and share new ideas and who can share in the pain and the pleasure of the roller coaster ride of new ventures. His own labs in Cambridge have become a hive of activity in cutting edge research and from which many postdocs/faculty and staff have moved into business or combined it with academia. He has tried to create an open, flexible and an aspirational climate so that people can thrive.
In the current climate Andy’s advice is to keep doors open and maintain contacts because when the economic conditions change it will be easier to get going sooner. And by way of example Andy highlighted how his lab at Cambridge is changing direction to a different big question:
What can technology do to address the big problems of going green? What will be good for the planet and what will regulators ask technology to deliver in the future? By seeking answers to these questions it may result in commercial opportunities as well.
In a few final words – If you want to mix academia with business remember – it is possible; but if you were focused only on academia or only on business – you might go further in each case. In other words although you can have your cake and eat it – the experience can be a tough one.
(These are notes derived from the lecture rather than notes of the lecture)
Paul was introduced to Andy via a common connection and found himself in an environment which was open, flexible and encouraging of enterprise. So he referred to this as motivation through mentoring. The basic idea of the lab in Cambridge was to take an idea, deploy it around the lab and if it worked try to commercialise it. This approach resulted in several companies, the biggest of which was probably Virata.
Other motivations included what we might call “Motivation through motoring” – in other words having an aspiration to be less poor and to buy a nice car! But this came later when the lab that was sponsored by AT+T was suddenly closed and the choices were between taking another job and starting a company with an emerging technology in 3 dimensional location systems (GPS for indoor applications). Paul did not fancy the 9 to 5 routines so he got together with some others in the new venture.
A fortunate meeting took place, through which the team was able to arrange for an internship with a venture capital firm where they did their market research and started to build confidence in the idea, however there were some tough business questions. Was this a GPS system or an RFID system? And who else was doing something like this? So it was difficult to value the company and raise money. They then met Richard Green who had founded Ten Sails as an incubator for ideas in “space and time”. The results of the market research and finding a CEO restored their confidence and motivation to stay the course.
Other forms of motivation included the quality of team that had started to join the company. The Board, the management team and the business angel investors are all described as world class and aligned with the objectives of the .
Ubisense and the team there are part of the wider Cambridge ecosystem – a whole group of companies in wireless, GPS, telecoms etc., So they can measure their own progress and see IPO and trade exits from time to time. They are in good company and this reassures the team. They also compete with firms that are much better funded and have evolved technology that is far superior and this too makes them feel good. There is a sense of urgency to stay ahead of the game. The links with the University and a continous source of talent makes it all the more exciting.
For Paul then – his motivations were varied and included the desire/need to earn; but as can be seen it was not just about “toys” and “technology” but included a desire for affiliation with top people, a desire to be recognized and to achieve success.
Andy Hopper has been an academic researcher for many years and has supervised over 50 PhDs, earned a Fellowship of the Royal Society for his research and the high levels of citation of his work. So he is a hard core academic. Why does he get involved with business?
For Andy – while the University provides that pillar of security he where he has caught the bug for intellectual stimulation – whether nourished by the need for citations or personal ego – it is none the less a compelling pull to continue in academia. The University environment also provides for being kept up to date on international work, new ideas and one of the benefits of this in business is that it reduces surprises of anything that may be going on in a similar field.
As Andy said – In business you can’t get any real insights due to the need to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements and follow tight protocols. But in academia it is possible to learn about new developments due to a very different culture (and you only have to deal with egos!)of publications, peer review and conferences.
There are further debates that rage between academics and entrepreneurs about whether the knowledge is to be exploited for universal gain, national gain or personal gain and if as an academic you want to step into business you need to be comfortable with the arguments.
One of the motivations as an academic engaging in business is that you get to see the practical or tangible output of your research, but if you are at the leading edge and dealing with disruptive technology with uncertain outcomes and timescales it is really hard to raise money. You need to learn about how to do this and what motivates venture capitalists and how they work. You also need to figure out how not to lose your shirt! Without these insights if you do try and embark into business you will soon lose your motivations.
Andy is also motivated by having people around him that he regards as trusted parties, people with whom he can recombine from time to time to start companies, have and share new ideas and who can share in the pain and the pleasure of the roller coaster ride of new ventures. His own labs in Cambridge have become a hive of activity in cutting edge research and from which many postdocs/faculty and staff have moved into business or combined it with academia. He has tried to create an open, flexible and an aspirational climate so that people can thrive.
In the current climate Andy’s advice is to keep doors open and maintain contacts because when the economic conditions change it will be easier to get going sooner. And by way of example Andy highlighted how his lab at Cambridge is changing direction to a different big question:
What can technology do to address the big problems of going green? What will be good for the planet and what will regulators ask technology to deliver in the future? By seeking answers to these questions it may result in commercial opportunities as well.
In a few final words – If you want to mix academia with business remember – it is possible; but if you were focused only on academia or only on business – you might go further in each case. In other words although you can have your cake and eat it – the experience can be a tough one.
(These are notes derived from the lecture rather than notes of the lecture)
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Taking deep science to market – Plastic Logic
Plastic Logic has grown out of the Cavendish Labs in Cambridge from the work of Professors Friend and Sirringhaus. The firm is at the cutting edge of technology, built on fundamental scientific inquiry (with papers in the top journals and high citation indexes). It presently employs 150 people and as a firm it has absorbed $50m for research and development (after the time in the academic labs of Cambridge) and now a further $100m to develop the factory (not counting any subsidies from the German Government for the factory in Dresden). All in all not a garage start-up by sexy ponytailed fast talking entrepreneurs, but a deep science based company.
For more information about the products and processes please look up the website for Plastic Logic. http://www.plasticlogic.com/process.php
From a talk on Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge Unievrsity
First a few remarks from Prof Richard Friend:
“The proposition is that if we can use plastics like ink – but replace things that are useful like silicon, to provide silicon like functionality, then we can make a great revolution. We can get rid of icons like the huge factories and move to a manufacturing method where objects can be made cheaply…..”
This thinking got the first company underway – called Cambridge Display Technologies http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/ now owned by Sumitomo. The fundamental proposition is based on what are known as Polymer organic light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs). Even before CDT, the academic work was published in 1988 and there has been a stream of publications in leading journals in parallel with company development
The progress from scientific inquiry to commercialisation is a long journey and the challenges at the technical level included a search for stability of the product, scalable manufacturing processes, and finding enough performance from transistors so that the end product can do more jobs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYc4dnVs4RM
“From when basic science was being done – to how to translate this into a product that can be scaled up – when this happens you know that the most interesting things happen in an industrial setting….”
However the virtue of a University setting for research is that we can’t keep knowledge secret, but we can patent and get value, especially if you can get a portfolio of a wide enough interest. We filed a number of patents before we published. And have filed even more patents as a company. So – in 2000 we raised £1.75m (Amadeus, Dow Ventures, CRIL) and appointed a CEO – Stuart Evans – when it felt right to form a company
There are probably three major constructs that scientists need to understand; the differences between doing science; doing technology and doing business. Each is very different and this has an impact on the nature of people that get hired into the business.
As academics we should not be ashamed of moving things into business, but we should be candid, because the interaction between academia and industry can be very valuable. If we look at plastic electronics as an example most of the research and engineering run in parallel, where the interactions, inquiries and work run backwards and forwards. Hence the University environment also gets strengthened by such interaction.
When firms are being kind to us they recognise and say that we lead them into the future. And because managing is not always straightforward we need to recognise the ultimate limitations of the Universities ability in commercialisation. Hence we need to be nice to companies. There is a very positive benefit for both parties.
A few highlighted remarks from Stuart Evans – the founding CEO
If you are going to “make it happen” by taking a deep science project to market there are a number of decision points and critical success factors. Here is what we have learnt so far:
One of the most critical decisions is to decide when to go commercial, when it is no longer a project in the lab. This requires a sense of critical mass of events, evidence and belief in the product’s future. Of course from here the next decision is whether or not to start a company. In the case of plastic electronics, there was only one choice – a company had to be started.
From this key decision the next stages include finding a top name ambassador who also believes in you and your project. This person provides a strong signal to the investor and business community that there is something in the opportunity that draws others to it.
The founders need to then raise some money to get the very early stages of the business concept underway, file patents, get basic communication “out there”.
Then you do need a CEO – who will make things happen at a very practical level, like help to raise money, hire the right people, get facilities organised and start to get to customers and build commercial evidence for further investments and commercialisation.
From here on the CEO needs to find a way to attract a top team and the very early team at Plastic Logic were absolutely at the top of their game, not least Henning Sirringhaus who made it to a Professorship at Cambridge before he turned 40.
There were a number of decisive moments, when investors put in money, including some of the top Fortune 500 companies. One of the major lessons we learnt from that experience is that try and get more than one of them to invest because you can get a better balance in the relationships. In other words you will not become dependent on one set of relationships – which can leave you in a vulnerable position. The trick is to find a lead investor, whose reputation in the market place is gold plated. This lead investor will attract others to follow.
The questions and decisions about where and how to make money – in other words building the business model is perhaps one of the most complex, once you have got underway.
There is a kind of Moore’s Law to the way cash is used up in high and disruptive technology. We had to take the technology itself from say 5 working transistors from a pool of 8 to getting 2 million to work reliably – if we were to make anything useful. This is a huge leap from the lab to the market place and requires a lot of clever engineering, money and smart people. It also requires a huge level of faith.
This level of faith comes from knowing that if you get it right you can lead to new iconic products for the future. So for example with the invention of transistors came great products of the past – the Sony walkman is an example and with further miniaturisation has come mobile phones, the blackberry and other products. So although some of our sceptics say that Plastic Logic is on a hopeless journey our belief is that we are positioning ourselves to be an iconic company. Remember that Apple has transformed itself from being a PC company to a major player in music – through the creation of an iconic product – the ipod.
From our perspective you need great science to make great market opportunities. And this in turn means if you have a great product you can be transformational in your vision.
All this requires cash:
So we have raised cash in a number of rounds starting with the very early $1.75m; then a further $3m to hire research staff, then $17m to scale up operations; $30m for a prototype line and most recently $100m for a factory in Dresden.
Take home lessons so far:
Find customers very early on.
Proof of Concept is not a prototype
Watch out for the big prize
Keep innovating and inventing
Build teams within teams
Focus on industry structure
Search for low cost capital
FT has been generous – reports that we have the best chance of being a $1bn company from a University spinout
For more information about the products and processes please look up the website for Plastic Logic. http://www.plasticlogic.com/process.php
From a talk on Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge Unievrsity
First a few remarks from Prof Richard Friend:
“The proposition is that if we can use plastics like ink – but replace things that are useful like silicon, to provide silicon like functionality, then we can make a great revolution. We can get rid of icons like the huge factories and move to a manufacturing method where objects can be made cheaply…..”
This thinking got the first company underway – called Cambridge Display Technologies http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/ now owned by Sumitomo. The fundamental proposition is based on what are known as Polymer organic light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs). Even before CDT, the academic work was published in 1988 and there has been a stream of publications in leading journals in parallel with company development
The progress from scientific inquiry to commercialisation is a long journey and the challenges at the technical level included a search for stability of the product, scalable manufacturing processes, and finding enough performance from transistors so that the end product can do more jobs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYc4dnVs4RM
“From when basic science was being done – to how to translate this into a product that can be scaled up – when this happens you know that the most interesting things happen in an industrial setting….”
However the virtue of a University setting for research is that we can’t keep knowledge secret, but we can patent and get value, especially if you can get a portfolio of a wide enough interest. We filed a number of patents before we published. And have filed even more patents as a company. So – in 2000 we raised £1.75m (Amadeus, Dow Ventures, CRIL) and appointed a CEO – Stuart Evans – when it felt right to form a company
There are probably three major constructs that scientists need to understand; the differences between doing science; doing technology and doing business. Each is very different and this has an impact on the nature of people that get hired into the business.
As academics we should not be ashamed of moving things into business, but we should be candid, because the interaction between academia and industry can be very valuable. If we look at plastic electronics as an example most of the research and engineering run in parallel, where the interactions, inquiries and work run backwards and forwards. Hence the University environment also gets strengthened by such interaction.
When firms are being kind to us they recognise and say that we lead them into the future. And because managing is not always straightforward we need to recognise the ultimate limitations of the Universities ability in commercialisation. Hence we need to be nice to companies. There is a very positive benefit for both parties.
A few highlighted remarks from Stuart Evans – the founding CEO
If you are going to “make it happen” by taking a deep science project to market there are a number of decision points and critical success factors. Here is what we have learnt so far:
One of the most critical decisions is to decide when to go commercial, when it is no longer a project in the lab. This requires a sense of critical mass of events, evidence and belief in the product’s future. Of course from here the next decision is whether or not to start a company. In the case of plastic electronics, there was only one choice – a company had to be started.
From this key decision the next stages include finding a top name ambassador who also believes in you and your project. This person provides a strong signal to the investor and business community that there is something in the opportunity that draws others to it.
The founders need to then raise some money to get the very early stages of the business concept underway, file patents, get basic communication “out there”.
Then you do need a CEO – who will make things happen at a very practical level, like help to raise money, hire the right people, get facilities organised and start to get to customers and build commercial evidence for further investments and commercialisation.
From here on the CEO needs to find a way to attract a top team and the very early team at Plastic Logic were absolutely at the top of their game, not least Henning Sirringhaus who made it to a Professorship at Cambridge before he turned 40.
There were a number of decisive moments, when investors put in money, including some of the top Fortune 500 companies. One of the major lessons we learnt from that experience is that try and get more than one of them to invest because you can get a better balance in the relationships. In other words you will not become dependent on one set of relationships – which can leave you in a vulnerable position. The trick is to find a lead investor, whose reputation in the market place is gold plated. This lead investor will attract others to follow.
The questions and decisions about where and how to make money – in other words building the business model is perhaps one of the most complex, once you have got underway.
There is a kind of Moore’s Law to the way cash is used up in high and disruptive technology. We had to take the technology itself from say 5 working transistors from a pool of 8 to getting 2 million to work reliably – if we were to make anything useful. This is a huge leap from the lab to the market place and requires a lot of clever engineering, money and smart people. It also requires a huge level of faith.
This level of faith comes from knowing that if you get it right you can lead to new iconic products for the future. So for example with the invention of transistors came great products of the past – the Sony walkman is an example and with further miniaturisation has come mobile phones, the blackberry and other products. So although some of our sceptics say that Plastic Logic is on a hopeless journey our belief is that we are positioning ourselves to be an iconic company. Remember that Apple has transformed itself from being a PC company to a major player in music – through the creation of an iconic product – the ipod.
From our perspective you need great science to make great market opportunities. And this in turn means if you have a great product you can be transformational in your vision.
All this requires cash:
So we have raised cash in a number of rounds starting with the very early $1.75m; then a further $3m to hire research staff, then $17m to scale up operations; $30m for a prototype line and most recently $100m for a factory in Dresden.
Take home lessons so far:
Find customers very early on.
Proof of Concept is not a prototype
Watch out for the big prize
Keep innovating and inventing
Build teams within teams
Focus on industry structure
Search for low cost capital
FT has been generous – reports that we have the best chance of being a $1bn company from a University spinout
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